Warming Up with Phil Mickelson

Phil Mickelson. On the range. Warming up. Talking golf. Uncut. Dig in!

The 6-time major champ joins GOLF’s Dylan Dethier and takes us through his process. He says there’s something all s—- ballstrikers do at address. He says his warmup routine has changed dramatically over the years. He says he hits four different driver shots — but he only likes three of ’em. He says he has a memory bank of great shots he’s hit that he can tap into. Over the course of a half-hour on the range, it turns out Phil Mickelson has a lot to say. We hope you enjoy the watch.
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All shitty ball Strikers will start with their hands back all good ones will will start here you at least have a chance you’re set up for Success here you’re set up for failure like that so I’ll start with a straight line and then I’ll feel it cast back to a straight Line we’re in Miami where to live it’s like a team photo shoot we are here with one and only Phil Nicholson it’s hard to get time with Phil Michelson a uh B we we’ve got time with him on the Range we’re sticking to golf for today that’s what you guys want

We’ll see how many words I even get in feel like Phil is a kind of a master at filling the space himself every he talks golf your ears kind of perk up because he’s got something interesting to say so I’m hoping he tells us and interesting stuff and I’m pretty confident you Will right we’ve got a special treat today it’s uh six-time major champion and uh one of the games premier left-handers of all time Mr Phil Mickelson holding his bands hey Phil thanks for being here and uh showing us a little bit about how you warm up so

Dylan I’m 53 now I’m a little bit older so be I usually before tournaments before I play I’m in the gym doing some kind of stretching Physical Therapy but a lot of times at home I’ll just go out and play Early rounds and so I leave

These on my cart or in my golf bag I just have some band work like there’s basic exercises that I have to do to get my body kind of activated before I go play so um I have these bands and I’ll I’ll just latch them onto the edge of

The cart okay any old golf cart you don’t have like a Phil Mickelson custom well I have my cart but when I travel I’ll um you don’t need to right so on this particular one I’ll make it a little bit uh just a single wrap here

And um and just do some basic shoulder work like I I can’t I can’t go without like just basic shoulder movement the shoulder back and knees are like an important part so I’ll just do 10 like if I’m in the gym I’ll do a few reps of

Of more but I’ll just get kind of activated like that and uh is this something you’ve always done or how long has this been part of your routine no it’s getting older it’s been uh a little bit more so I’ll um look just get you know I’m just trying to get the Shoulder

Activated a little bit even even just doing hitting a few balls like we’re going to I’ve just got to get moving so kind of bear with me here as I take I go through it I always was like one of the one of my power moves like coming down

Is like is is coming down and pulling with my lead side so I always like to do a single arm kind of movement and so sometimes I’ll do it slow and try to like work the muscle and then sometimes I’ll try to do it a little bit faster

And try to be a little bit more explosive and engaged so I’ll do both of those but uh and you always want to do it both sides so Sor I’m just to keep Body Balance you know and so forth but I’ll do a little bit more than this and

Then um I always try to to uh get something to engage the core so in golf we use a lot of anti-rotation meaning you know you want to have rotational speed but you also want to have stability so anti-rotation is is a uh a big part of it so one of the basic

Exercises that I always I won’t play until I do is uh called we just call them circles so you just hold your arms out and just do circles so you’re engaging this to not rotate so I’m just trying to again get this old body activated how long does this process usually take if

You’re taking if you’re going through the full thing I’ll do 10 to 15 reps of each one that okay we’re doing and then um I have to stretch my legs so look I feel stupid that this is my warmup but I’ve got to get my hamstrings and low

Back uh stretched out so I’ll spread my legs which relieves the pressure on my back and I’ll just kind of like stretch it out that’s I mean that’s a pretty solid split you’ve got going well I can get moving and then it just takes me a little while and then I

Always want to do one of the low back stretches is and relieves pressure off my organs and and I’ll do this throughout the round too I try to keep my toes pointed straight do a deep Squat and just push out on my legs and it will as I let my sacrum kind

Of sit low it’ll stretch those little muscles around the low back which is helpful so uh I always do squats just to get my legs activated so whether I start on a deep SWAT Squat and go up or just kind of go down I’ll do slow and then explosive because again

Well I call it explosive it’s not really you’re you’re so B for uh a guy that likes to hit hellacious bombs come on don’t don’t talk yourself down so much I’m not as explosive as I’d like to be um now when we get to hitting

Yep um I what I’ll do is I’ll set 10 balls aside okay and look I don’t do this every time and there’s no right or wrong way on how to warm up everybody’s got their own their own thing the range balls are colder they’re sitting out overnight

Like they’re not going to be and they’re they’ve been hit a bunch they’re not going to be as long as like the balls we use so when I am on the Range and I’m using distances and using my monitor uh I’m not overly concerned with like how

Far my irons are going because they’re always going to be about four to six yards shorter than the ball that I’m actually using because it’s newer and fresher and so forth but the short shots 30 so I have set numbers that I build references to and I

Always try to hit those numbers yeah so I go 30 45 60 75 90 and I’ll start with those numbers before you get started I’m just curious 25 years ago what did that pre-process look like would just walk up and hit and start you know say oh take a

Sand wedge and just kind of loosen up and I usually have a heavy or light and or light weighted uh club that I’ll swing to get activated so you want a heavy heavier Club to build muscle strength and you want a lighter one to get your nervous system firing a little

Faster okay all right so what’s your first uh say you’re hitting 30 yards here yeah so I’m just going to hit a 30 yard shot and I know just from reference that if I take the club back to that point and accelerate like that’s going to be roughly 30 now that’s a little

Short cuz I hit it heavy but I would have a launch monitor kind of telling me you know how far those are flying so let’s say that’s 30 now I’m going to go to 45 and I know if I take the club back to a certain point and accelerate like

That’s going to be 45 so do you think about like a clock system like how far you’re going back to get to a certain yardage or is it depending on acceleration or how do you how do you feel about 30 yards vers 45 vers so when

You get to like full so I have two different numbers with each iron one is a full swing and then one is a set shorter back swing so I’ll have a nine iron that goes 155 but it goes 145 a wedge goes 140 and it goes 13 so I have

And that’s where I call what I call pels it’s like 10 off a stock got it 10 off stock it’s a shorter back swing which is going to have a different lower spin rate lower flight and go 10 yards shorter now that’s a set back swing with

The same acceleration as a full swing but every shot under 100 you have the two variables which is how far back do you go and then how much energy you have going through so um on a full shot my acceleration is a constant like I accelerate Max on both of those shots

But inside 100 you you you can’t really do that because you want the ball coming in soft if I did a 30- yard shot and I took it back short with Max acceleration it’s going to be low and hot and not stop by the hole so got it I have to

Have like a little bit softer shot I might open the face a little bit and I know that this is 30 yards but that’s more of the shot I would hit going into a pin so you have two variables and what I’m just what I do is hit 1,000 to, 1500

Balls every month to those numbers and just build a reference got it so I just know that that is 30 yards now a 60 yard shot I take it back to basically the same spot as I do 75 5 and and 990 but I just changed the acceleration so I’ll go

Back halfway and I know that that’s 60 yeah and then I’ll accelerate a little bit more for 75 and then I’ll accelerate Max to go to 90 so I’m changing both those variables and uh and that’s pretty full that 90 yard Shot full acceleration shorter back swing got it and then a

Longer back swing so all right so what comes next so I’ll either go I’ll switch between uh odds and evens and it’s I’ll go you know wedge 8 six or I’ll go 975 did you tell us the degree of this wedge or is it a it’s basic 60° wedge unmarked 60° wedge

Yeah it’s a copy of an old I2 that Callaway made for me because our the grooves at Callaway are really good and um that’s just the basically that that club from many years ago that I grew up with playing and then then when I go to

Uh my short irons I use what’s my pel swing first so it’s a little bit shorter back swing same acceleration we have a slice wind right for me slice wind um it’s actually it’s good for me to work into it because um I try to uh I’ll I’ll it helps my

Swing because I draw it with what I call Path uh what does draw it with path well you have your hands right you can flip over your hands and there’s a lot of face rotation there and then drawing with path is using the path to turn it

So for instance if I take there’s two ways to do it if I take my lead arm and hug it on my body and bend it you can see the club releases if I keep my arm straight the club doesn’t release but if I keep it tucked on my body and when it

Bends you can see the face releases naturally that’s drawing one way to draw it with path the other way is to take my rear arm like table tennis and in table tennis you know you hit a Top Spin lob I’ll take my rear arm and I’ll just let

It rotate over and the reason I do that is it softens the face rotation so it’s a softer draw did you play a lot of tennis and a lot of like racket sports or is that something you kind of made the connection later made the connection

Later yeah uh you had to run a lot in tennis not my thing table tennis not as much so these are like pelv back swings um rotating that rear arm over to let it kind of fight the wind a little bit and then I’ll go full swing and you’ll

Notice the trajectory is going to change because as I go to a longer back swing I’m creating more speed through the ball and conversely it’s going to go higher and a little farther have more Spin and so forth is the pel’s shot how does it react differently when it lands

So it’s coming in lower with less spin so if you look at um some of them my wins at AT&T where the greens are soft and it’s hard to get to those back pins because the ball is backing up and everybody spin it back I’ll take that pill shot bring it in

Lower and I’ll take quite a bit off of P shot so I’ll have different settings too so um this is where I started to play really well in the wind when I won the British Open working with Dave fell back in 04 uh I guess it was December of 03

So January of4 was when we’ve been doing this so it’s been 20 years and I’ll shorten the back swing even more so if that was if I have a pel swing now I’ll go back that’s 10 short of pells right here and accelerate and that’s even

Lower and a will fly the wind barely even touched that right and then if I go 20 off pels now we’re talking really low shot that uh and see that’s would you hit that shot I hit it the British a lot yeah so it’s the same acceleration it’s the same

Ball position it’s the same setup just a shorter back swing same acceleration so it’s simplifies it now that’s what I didn’t do well early in my career was I could hit it low but I was coming in so Steep and hard I was creating so much

Spin that it was fighting the wind and I didn’t play well at the British until I worked with Dave and figured this stuff out and then the first time I played the British after having done this which was 04 I missed a playoff at TR by a shot

When Todd Hamilton beat Ernie ell’s at the British there and uh I played really well there so you know I’ll use um 10 20 30 off of pels for instance I won Pebble in 2012 and uh in 19 and both times to the back pin on

13 I took 30 40 yards off of a pel shot so I had you know 120 and I’m hitting a seven iron you know and I’m coming in with such a short back swing that it would flight like that really and then it would skip back to that pin because

You couldn’t fly it up on that shelf and stick it it would it would spin back because it’s still pretty soft yeah time correct so that’s how I was doing and so you do you just have a catalog of shots in your mind that you’ve hit in I mean I

Imagine like shots from pressure situations stand out more than others or shots from wind stand out more than others but do you remember pretty specific specifically the feels of shots that you hit 5 10 15 years ago yes and so that’s why I don’t need to prati

That’s why my practice here is going to be a little bit different than than others uh that we’ll get to in a moment because I’ve already hit the shots and know what it feels like to hit them but I have to pull it out right so uh when

We practice there’s two ways to practice one is to build a foundation build a reference build your swing to make it feel or perform the way you want to make sure you’re fighting it straight and then the other is to mentally be able to pull those shots out when you need it

And so you really need to do both effectively and it doesn’t matter which one you do each day I’ll get to the specifics of what I’m talking about later so I I’m going down to a six iron here and I’m going to start with a pel

Shot now I don’t usually go to pels at six iron what happens is when we get to longer stuff the The Arc gets longer and flatter because we get to a longer Club the ball’s further away so it’s going to be uh a little shallower okay so I don’t

P too many six irons I mean I do but rarely but it’s more like8 n wedge right because um I’ll end up uh being able to kind of hold the face a little square through the target but when we get to longer stuff there’s got to be more

Release or you block it so with a six iron u i don’t pels it too often I’ll start with the pels here a little shorter back swing and then release it release that rear arm over just a little bit so it fights the wind PS is like a

Noun a verb and an adjective depending on the situation there are other words like that but uh pels is more of a positive word okay um I’ll go to a full shot here so you can see it’s a little bit higher flight and then um I’ll move On Then what I do is I have 10 balls so now I’ve I’ve hit maybe 15 10 15 shots I don’t need to over hit so now what I want to do is pull out any club and kind of change you know make a variety of it I have 10

Balls counted and I’m going to go through 10 shots um and I’m going to vary it okay so I’m going to start back here and and really what I’m trying to do is um visualize a shot feel the shot and execute the shot shot in practice so

That I’m better able to do it on the golf course so there’s a tree here with an orange uh little wrap around it and I’ll take that tree and say okay that’s my target uh what kind of shot do I want to hit well uh I’m going to hit a big

Carving I’m going to cut one and then it’s going to have this cut wind and it’s going to really work right to left I’m going to hit a pels eight that starts and feeds in and it’s like there’s a left pin there okay so I’ll get behind it are you picturing a

Specific hole on the course you’re going to play or you’re just okay often times yeah there’ll be a a shot out on the course so like if that’s the fourth hole at Augusta and it’s a left pin or whatever uh if you want to use austa I would say that it’s the

Um a uh left front left pin on um 18 let’s say okay and I want to work it right to left now that’s that’s a uphill lie so it’s a little bit different but let’s say I want to work it and I have to compensate for the wind so um I’ll

Set up to the right and when I hit a cut with a cut wind it’s going to really move I’ll try to feel that shot I’ll try to execute and let it just kind of slide with the wind and work over and then get to that and you hit that slope and then

It kind of just feeds over to that Sunday pin that’s right and then we’ll say Okay um I’ll then I’ll switch clubs and I say okay I’m at number one and I’m going to be hitting a seven iron in there and the pin’s going to be uh over

There front right Sunday pin bottom right I want to hit a little draw on there and work it off that slope so um I’m going to feel that rear arm rotate over again I want to make sure that I don’t move forward on the ball if I move

Forward on it I’m going to block it right so uh I want to make sure I stay back and let that rear arm kind of fold so that I can hit a soft draw in there I’ll take that um same orange tree I’ll start it at that and I’ll try to let it

Work a little bit right and try to feel it in uh as I walk up so that’s kind of a halfhearted effort there I’ve got to get back feel the shot visualize it and then try to create it much like I would out on the course yeah that’s pretty much as

Ordered right there so then I’ll take then I’ll go to another club so I won’t hit the same one right and like all right I’ve got a uh we’re at uh let’s say The British Open yep and we’re at TR coming up this year and we get to uh whole uh

Nine let’s see no we get to hold 12 there’s a right to left wind I want to hit a low one iron I want it to be you know head high and drawing back into that slice wind okay so now I got to get back here and feel that shot okay what

Does that feel like and we’ll go over to that yellow flag and I’ll try to hug this yellow tree with a yellow yellow Mark go to that yellow flag um and all I’m going to do is just again I’m going to shorten the back swing a little bit

I’m not going to change ball position or anything and I’m going to feel that rear arm kind of rotate over for a little draw same ball position and everything that is about head height it is I pulled it so it wasn’t the start line that I wanted so I’m going to go

Back and do that H again yeah all right so when you’re hitting this low Dr like how much are you making mechanical adjustments versus just think so I’m not here if I were hitting 100 Balls today yeah I would be working on getting the foundation of my golf swing feeling the

Way I want make sure the path is right make sure uh everything is is correct also I’ll always have an alignment stick because if you don’t line up right you’re going to compensate with your swing so I always want to make sure I have an alignment aid but right now when

I’m doing this I’m picking out a spot in front of my ball I’m lining up my feet to make sure that I’m aligned properly uh but I would always have an alignment stick just to to help out with that because I don’t want to misalign it at at uh in

Practice so now I’ve hit two I’ve pulled both of them not really happy with those so I’m going to go back to that later and pull it out later mhm and be like all right uh what other shot might I hit maybe a uh I don’t want to hit a wood right

Now so I’d say let’s go back to the uh pitching wedge yeah you’ve got a 10 iron in here and we’re uh coming into you know whole 14 out austa I just hit a nice drive and the pin’s over there on the right and I want to hit it

Really high and get it to stop as quick as I can so again I’ll go with that orange flag there I’m going to get my alignment I’m going to uh I’m not going to draw this one it’s going to be straight but the wind’s going to push it

But I’m going to go high so I’m going to feel this club cast a little bit more just like I would on on the course so what’s the adjustment to hit it hit a straight ball instead of a draw or a fade so you know it’s a feel thing right

So if I hit a draw I’m letting that arm release over if I’m hitting a fade I’m getting a little bit wider here and trying to hit the outside part of the ball which releases slows down the release of the club and here I’m just letting I’m just feeling it go back to

Square so average ball Strikers or guy like you won’t find a good ball Striker who does not set up with a straight line arm and club like you you can return to that through the swing swinging 100 miles hour whatever and feel go back to square you start here there’s this looseness if

You start here you can’t go back to a certain point in the back swing stop and go forward if you start in a straight line you can take it back here and you’re in a position to go forward you can take it back at any point stop and

Go forward you start with your hands back you go to any point you have to wait for the club to downclock and so forth so all shitty ball Strikers will start with their hands back all good ones will will start here you at least have a chance you’re set up for Success

Here you’re set up for failure like that so I’ll start with a straight line and then I’ll feel it cast back to a straight line and so it softly Cuts With the Wind yeah and I’m letting it get the full kind of trajectory if you will and stop so

That’s kind of my warm-up routine um and then I’ll go hit some putts and whether it’s at Augusta I’ll putt from off the green on the Range because there’s a lot of shots that um I’ll hit from off the green with a putter because it’s into the Grain and

It’s hard to to stop when it’s dry like when it’s wet the ball will skip through the the rye grass right so if we play a gust in the morning and it’s wet I’ll go CH some chips because the ball will skid through the the wet Rye but when it’s

Dry and sticky you can’t chip because it’ll just grab it so I’ll hit some putts and uh I’ll do it on the on the green you know I’ll putt to you know one one of those markers and try to get a feel for the speed for off the green

Yeah and uh I’ll actually really you know focus on it I think one of the mistakes that that I have made in the past and other players will make when they’re putting from off the green is they’ll look at the green and they’ll get this sense of the speed of the

Putting green but not the Fringe so when I’m putting from off the green I don’t look at the green I only look at The Fringe and try to get a touch for off off the green as well as on right are you good are you a good like Botti ball player

You ever play uh corle yeah yeah I’m okay like I you know it’s not like I’m proud of it you know that yeah I can play corner I’m not proud of it can you walk me through like just what the most common advice is that you’ll give to

Someone in like a proam CU I imagine people anytime you’re playing with them they’ll say hey Phil can you look at this can you look at this maybe that gets really old but so the first thing I always say is that anything that I may

Say as the player you need to decide if it helps you or not because there’s a lot of ways to swing and and play and and things that have worked for me may or may not work for you but it’s worth a try like I can give you data and input

And suggestions and then as a player you have to determine if it works for you or not and there’s no there’s no set thing that may or may not work so I might give you an idea like I talked to you about hey you can take that rear arm and

Rotate it over it may not work for some people right so they might want to keep that lead arm uh close to their body who does that Lee westw right so Lee Westwood stays on top of it his body’s not having to do this and so forth his

His elbow stays close to his arm stays bent the club releases naturally without any hands he’s a wonderful ball Striker he can hit stay on top of it with his body doesn’t have to tilt and he hits these flat penetrating flights he’s a wonderful ball Striker uh Bubba Watson

Does not Bend his elbow he keeps his arm straight right so he hits he has a incredible hands and he has a lot of uh hand movement through the ball to create draws and Fades and so forth and he has a lot of movement and I think some of

That is due to the fact that he has such great hands and he uses them right but his arm stays straight through the shot so there’s no release with the path it’s released with his hands and he’s got the hands to do it so these things won’t

Work for him because that’s not how he plays right and there’s and that’s not right or wrong it’s just so anything I’d say to somebody in the proam is the first thing is this might not work yeah right like here’s a thought and then how

Did it feel uh some people I’ll say if you want to take one side out of the course or not this is another thing I’ll say is that if you keep your head back seie used to do this you were more inclined to pull it because you have

More time to release it if your head moves forward you don’t have time to release it you’re going to block it so that’s a way to take out half the golf course that may work that works for a lot of people not everybody but so that’s kind of the first thing I’ll I’ll

Do cool and then you would ordinarily then what finish off you’d hit a few 3-woods a few drivers like what is that how do you finish the the warmup here if you were to do so so um we won’t make you hit driver here I can hit some dver

Be in danger I don’t know what the there’s there’s three drives that I like to hit okay uh there’s four that I’ll hit but there’s three that I like to hit so I have three balls here what’s the fourth that you don’t like to hit uh low

Draw is a hard shot to hit because when you come down on the driver the physics of it when you move the weight back it’s not wanting to uh close and so it doesn’t have a lot of Loft so when you hit a a low driver it’s easy to take out

Half the golf course and only hit a cut right so uh if I Tee It Down my Miss is going to be to my left or blocked it’s going to be a cut so I’ll hit low drivers because um especially as we come up to myoba there’s a lot of low drivers

That all hit there um and the key the key to this for me and again it’s not the same for everybody is I’ve got to let the club get back out wide I have a lot of lag in my wrist and so forth I

Have a long swing so I have to wait and let the club get out wide if I get too steep with my hands I won’t get enough release on it and it it will block but when I set up and te it low I know it’s not going right it’s only going

Left and so I can go ahead and release it pretty hard and know that it’s going to go straight or just a little left and so there it is working with the wind and so forth so um I’ll use that shot at uh myoba because it takes half

The golf course out now when I Tee It High I have to then stay behind it a little B more to hit it more on the upswing and the club is releasing more and so it takes more of the left side out of play and it only wants to go

Right so um if I have more trouble left I’ll te a little bit higher and I’ll let the rear arm release over and it should draw uhhuh and so it draws back into the into the wind and takes the left side out and then the other one is like a

Stock cut or a you know a high cut and I hit this shot a lot like 14 17 at Augusta where I basically just swing like I don’t have to do anything uh to the Club it’s just going that’s what it wants to hit this is what just happens

Got it exactly so all I try to do is stay out of the way meaning I try to not manipulate anything I try to just feel the club accelerate into the finish and and and not fight uh not fight it the only thing I can do to mess

That up is to try to do something to it just if I just swing the club that’s what it hits so I hit those three drives and then that’s basically it now I might go hit a few putts before I play and that’s it how the hell

Did you finish second at Augusta last year I shot the second low score I mean it’s not it’s just math it’s just math but from the outside we didn’t see that coming um I I’m I’ve had a really good offseason and I think there’s some good

Things to happen this year I think that uh I’m in a position to surprise a lot of people all right well Phil thanks for talking us through that hopefully people understand at least a little bit of it thanks D appreciate it you got it